>> israel's brinkmanship with hamas fueling speculation that israel is using the conflict as a test run for an attack on iran and a way to locate locations. bing ram is author of into the fire 0, the most extraordinary battle in the afghan war. good to see you. if this is not at all about gaza but indeed about iran and this is a test to see what sort of nuclear and arms iran has, and if it is a test, what have we learned? >> to the extent that it is a test of missiles and whether you can shoot them down the advantage goes to israel. they've shown they have an antimissile system. on the political grounds, clearly prime minister morsi of egypt has come out as being the most powerful local figure in the arab middle east. the third thing that is really puzzling, about three weeks ago the united states held an exercise with israel where we had american troops on the ground at our antimissile batteries inside israel. so that leaves open the question whether president obama is thinking that we'd have americans in israel involved if there were a war between israel and iran. >> let's break t